


Between the Dog and the Wolf

by Ansereg (Tyellas)



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Boot Worship, Dominance, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, Flogging, M/M, Or do they?, Power Bottom, Rough Sex, Slash, Submission, daemon AU, they both have daemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:54:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Ansereg
Summary: Amidst the cruel splendor of Numenor, Ar-Pharazôn has kingship, riches, the finest daemon a man can have…and the enthralled Maia, Sauron, as his leman. Until the night Sauron lashes him to discontent by begging for more.For Vulgarweed, my Fandom Trumps Hate winner for 2020, lush and harsh m/m. Silmarillion setting with an AU twist: everyone has daemons – animals that express their soul. At least, everyone’s supposed to have daemons. Sauron may, or may not…
Relationships: Ar-Pharazôn/Sauron | Mairon
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	Between the Dog and the Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vulgarweed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/gifts).



It was twilight in Númenor’s brief winter. Ar-Pharazôn remembered what he’d heard this hour called, when he was a sailor, a venturer: the hour between the dog and the wolf.

He was King, now, of Númenor and lands in Middle-Earth, realms extending into the falling night. Increasingly, wandering Middle-Earth's seas pleased even his venturer’s blood less. Pharazôn spent more time here, at Armenelos, in the palace made stately by his kin, near the new shrines he had decreed. Those shrines, honouring Melkor, the Lord Beyond, sent their smokes up every day, defying the height of the Meneltarma and its abandoned hallow of Eru. 

In that palace, he strode through halls vaulted ten times the height of a man, pillared in black marble and gold: attended yet almost alone, as Númenor’s kings had always been. Ever since, Ar-Pharazôn thought, darkly, his fool ancestor Elros had chosen mortality as their lot.

“I am here,” said a dulcet voice, beside and below him. He reached down and patted his one true companion: the creature who expressed his soul. His daemon, Azrarabê. The golden daemon-hound was ever by his side, as were all thinking beings’ daemons, be they mortal, elf, or dwarf. She was tall enough that her head came to his hip. Her smooth warmth beneath his hand calmed him. 

Azrarabê’s name fitted his former destiny, as Venturer and sailor. He had claimed more than that when he became Númenor’s King. Truly, the elevation fit Azrarabê as well as it fit him. With her soulful eyes and long, thick fur, Azrarabê was splendid, radiating goodness and love. If any doubted Ar-Pharazôn of late, all they had to do was see Azrarabê. For surely a man with such a daemon must be the worthiest of kings. 

His weak-willed wife, Ar-Zimraphel, was as slippery as a pearl underwater lately, clinging to her old cults. Her daemon, a kirinki-bird, its small prettiness echoing hers, fluttered about her like a defiant candle-flame. All that could be said for the elusive creature was that it was Númenorean as could be. But even that bird would take refuge, at times, in Azrarabê’s fur.

Pharazôn had come to his chambers, and rounded on his dull attendants. “I will not dine this night. Tell Zigûr to come to me. Ready to obey – in every way.” Azrarabê, he noted, pricked her ears to hear it.

The folk of Númenor had a new priest to match their new worship. Pharazôn was pleased that the common folk had given that priest a name, Zigûr. He, himself, thrilled at the name that priest, a wizard, a Maia come to humanity, had worn when Pharazôn conquered him. Sauron.

Inside, he told a minion, “Disrobe me,” and observed himself in a vast mirror. His over-robe of sables and brocade slid from him, but he was not diminished. His shoulders and arms, earned as a seafarer, were mighty yet. When his under-robes of silk and linen were drawn down, he stood muscled and proud. The thick pelt of his chest and forearms was dun, with glints of blonde, echoing his rich gold hair and roan-ticked beard. His eyes were keen, his cheeks and jaw sharp as the prow of Númenor’s sailing destroyers. This was the proud visage of his ancient house, entwined with Númenor’s lords since the days of the weak kings who had but Elvish names. “My boots remain,” he announced.

Nearly nude, save for linen and leather, Pharazôn accepted a robe appropriate to the season, thick night-purple silk spangled with more gold. He drew it over the linen wrap girding his loins yet. “Leave us,” he decreed. With that, he thought no more of his servants, heedless of whether they were minions or slaves.

Azrarabê, charmingly, brought him one of his discarded shoes. “Oh ho! A present! A good hound, thou art. What will thee?” he asked. His dignity forgot, he squatted on his heels, to meet her concerned eyes. For the daemon-hound whined slightly, and carried her tail low.

“Zigûr’s - Sauron’s - daemon is not as other daemons. I. I am not as clever as thou. I do not have the words.” The hound snapped her jaws, in a way unlike her, and turned her head aside. “He feels wrong.”

Pharazôn’s heart softened. What creatures daemons were! Azrarabê proved she was the pure animal side of his soul, dear and unsophisticated. “Tis strange for one of male kind to have a male daemon. But surely Sauron’s inclinations explain such. And Sauron is a Maia. Their daemons must surely seem uncanny to thou and I, hey?”

Again, he scruffed his daemon’s head fondly. “Thou warnst me against Zimraphel, too, and thou seest her lack of might now. Jealous beastie. I see one who is fair and fine, I must claim them, whoever they be. Yea, even a Maia! Be at ease. Sport thou with - Sauron’s daemon – as thou did sport with Elendil’s upon a time.” Curses. He could never remember the name of Sauron’s daemon, a string of jaw-cracking letters.

“My lord, I am here.”

Pharazôn leapt up, caught out yet again by Sauron’s soundless movements.

The Maia and his daemon were each opposites to the mortal man and mortal daemon they faced. Sauron was male, and blonde, but there the resemblance ended. Though Sauron overtopped tall Pharazôn by a head, he was lithe, and elven-fair with it. His thick golden hair streamed to his waist with the slightest waves, lighter than his golden-tawny skin. Over high, deep cheekbones, his eyes had a chrysophrase glint. Pharazôn had not expected such beauty when army had conquered army, and Sauron, in black, horned armour, had been cast at his feet. But he had known, the moment he saw the Maia's visage, that he had to possess this being utterly. Sauron, in his captivity, had softened, seduced by the might of Pharazôn and his land. Sauron had confided that he had wrought himself a fair form to help the Elves hearken to him. But since they would not, and had rebuffed his gifts, Sauron was willing to offer those gifts to Pharazôn for the sake of mortal men.

Sauron’s rough-named daemon was of less refined mein. He was a great ragged dire-wolf, black shaded with grey, with curious cinnabar eyes. For a being that was a soul made manifest, this daemon was strange and secret, never speaking nor howling, ever silent. Pharazôn never looked at it without being glad that daemons did not eat. Fortunately, this daemon oft ranged far from Sauron. He did so now, slinking into the great bedchamber’s shadows.

They were, save for their daemons, alone. Pharazôn waved Azrarabê off without looking at her, for Sauron was sinking gracefully to the floor. This was the way of it between them: the counsellor kneeling ever to the king. Sauron's garb was a bolt of purpled silk worked with gold, wrapped about him in intricate folds, like the garb of a prize Middle-Earth concubine. Pharazôn would have draped him in gold and plundered jewels, yet all he would wear was one golden ring.

“I heard your mood was heavy, my lord. Let me ease you,” Sauron purred. And, completing a bow upon his knees, Sauron placed his lips to Pharazôn’s leather boots.

Pharazôn hissed at the exquisite pleasure of Sauron’s hot tongue caressing him through the leather. One boot-top was laved, and then the other, by a strap of slick muscle: a superb submission from the conquered one. Pharazôn let his robe fall open, allowing Sauron to progress up one mighty thigh. The delicate, fiery touch of the Maia’s mouth was intoxicating – even when teeth that hid their sharpness from the eye nipped like sword-tips.

Sauron knelt up again, but he rose no higher than Pharazôn’s loins. Without using his hands, Sauron mouthed the knot of linen above Pharazôn’s member, gripping its hem with his teeth. With a jerk of his lovely head, he undid the loin-cloth. Pharazôn immediately seized his own member, hoisting it by balls and shaft alike. “Suck,” he commanded. Let power hide his shame at not being hard immediately, as once he would have been.

The kneeling male beauty took Pharazôn’s meat in at one hungry, obedient go. Pharazôn gritted his teeth to feel himself taking time to rise under such blazing stimulation. Curse his lost youth! The hours spent roistering in Romenna, on ships, in Middle-Earth! The way he’d snap hard, and then harder yet, ready for every joy of plunder. The power to delight and surprise and torment, all between his legs. Even this woman-fair Maia, now, rose hard more swiftly than he did. He could see the bar of Sauron’s arousal pressing against his tight-wound silk. Pharazôn jerked back, his half-turgid shaft slapping against his left thigh. “Get naked. Then, onto the bed.”

Sauron eeled across the floor, half a slink, half a crawl, eyes glittering with depraved delight. Pharazôn remembered well the taunting way this Maia, also called Sauron, had kissed Pharazôn's boot in surrender. The way he had whispered truths, then counsel, in Pharazôn’s own ear, vouchsafing the secrets of the divine. His whimpered resistance when Pharazôn, maddened, had claimed him; his louche hungers after three or four such claimings. Their coming together in the bedchamber felt inevitable, fated. 

Pharazôn had thought it was utter power, to claim a Maia, a divine spirit, so. That was, until Sauron had told him of the endless delights of the Elves. Immortal, deathless, ever-fair, and, if inclined to one another, ever-lusty, coupling tirelessly with endless variation. Pharazôn had wanted to laugh. But time had begun to bite him. He had gotten no heir. Zimraphel’s hard-won, languid acquiescence left him as limp as her delicate wrists. Sauron’s tales gave him more to compete against than his younger self.

Before his eyes, Sauron was putting on a spectacle worthy of a king. Kneeling between the floor and the bed, Sauron reached to his midriff. Slowly, his golden hands slid open one fold of the dark silk, revealing more golden flesh. Suddenly, a spill of fabric unfurled from Sauron’s right shoulder, spiralling down to pause, nearly open, above Sauron’s loins. Sauron turned about, arse towards, to let the next folds of fabric fall, revealing a rump that would have been ravaged on the hour aboard a Númenorean warship. Sauron crawled free of the last folds of fabric to kneel upon the vast, rich bed, legs aspread. “I await your pleasure, my lord. Give me more of you.”

Off to one side, one of the daemons was whimpering, as if in warning.

Pharazôn opened a rich casket at the foot of the bed. It held the toys of harsh pleasures, to bind and hold, pierce and spread, sting and thud. All of it was rendered worthy of a king, in deerskin chased with gold, weighted with marble, carved from amethyst. Pharazôn dug down into this treasure-chest and pulled out a faithful worn flail, its many braided tails ready to flog one more time.

He liked a spot of the lash before fucking, he did: it had heated his blood ever since his time as a Venturer. And none could bear it like Sauron. Again and again, Pharazôn belabored the narrow, indented flanks, the full, round cheeks, the dancer’s thighs before him. A trance of absorption took him, as if he was lost to the measures of a dance, its music the slap of leather on hot, divine flesh. It might have been enough, if Sauron had cried in pain, showed broken, begged Pharazôn to stop. Across Sauron’s gilded hide, a pink glow rose to hard red stripes, cutting across him again and again, nigh to bleeding. But the king’s victim did not plead for mercy. Instead, he turned his head to gaze slyly at Pharazôn. “More,” he said.

Pharazôn heard a pained yip. Certain it was not Azrarabê, he went on. Casting the flail aside, he reached beneath Sauron’s slim hip and flipped the Maia over. As if to vex him more, Sauron was flawlessly erect.

“Your mouth anew,” Pharazôn ordered. Sauron ignored his own passion to fling himself on the king’s thickening shaft. This time, Pharazôn kindled. Shortly, Pharazôn seized Sauron’s neck and pulled him back. “Turn about. I will have your arse.” Even when ordering his willing captive to be sodomized, Pharazôn thought, he could not call the Maia _thee._

Sauron knew Pharazôn well. He had oiled himself before attending. Pharazôn thrust into him in one hard stroke, then hissed at the unique sensation. A man’s arse was hard, and tight, even rough - that was the pleasure of it. Yet Sauron was more. His nethers, between irresistible, flogging-striped cheeks, puckered like a virgin cabin-boy’s. Yet plunging into him felt like hot silk. Fucking the pliant Maia was a searing, addictive bliss supreme. A hint of the elves’ iron blood, of the gods’ own pleasures.

Off to the side, Pharazôn caught one of the daemons howling. The warg, he thought, for at that moment Sauron said, yet again, “More!” Pharazôn rode him hard – too hard, too fast. Too soon, Sauron’s divine arse was milking the last drops out of Pharazôn’s prick.

Beneath him, Sauron arced, sighed, turned. His face was divinely flushed, his chrysoprase eyes glittering. “My lord, yes. There is no pleasure but pain. I beg of you, more!”

Pharazôn shoved him down. “I am spent. If you would serve me as you served your beloved Melkor, ask me no more.”

Sauron sighed. “Alas! If you had life eternal – so too your pleasures would be.” And, with that, he plucked a hair from Pharazôn’s chest. Pharazôn saw it gleam silver against Sauron’s gold: a gray hair.

Pharazôn seized Sauron's wrist. “If that is what life eternal gives – I shall claim it. You ask for more? I shall have all. Yea, if it takes war against the Valar, I shall have it.”

Sauron bowed his head over a canny smile. “As my lord will have it.”

It sounded like surrender. It was - but not from Sauron. For Sauron had counselled this war much and many a time, in sad and silken words. Despite this, Pharazôn would show himself king. “Go!”

Sauron did. With one graceful bend, he gathered up the discarded silk, swirled it around him. His disarray was so becoming, it would set a new fashion as he left, trailing ells of fabric heedlessly behind him. Yet something was not right about that passage. Pharazôn, still reeling, could scarce think what, before Sauron let the chamber's great doors swing closed behind him.

Pharazôn's heart slowed, eventually. He chilled at the rare feeling of solitude. Then he whistled harshly, to summon his own daemon. He had to whistle twice, then give in and call. “Azrarabê!”

“Is _he_ gone?” the daemon asked.

“Yes. Come thou, my friend.”

The hound-daemon slunk out of the chamber’s hadows, her breathing harsh. It was unlike her, to be so shy. Pharazôn saw why. Her mouth was bloodied. At once, Pharazôn realized what had not been aright about Sauron’s leaving: his daemon had not followed.

His first thought was fear, that he might lose all in the hour of claiming it. “What hast thou done!”

Azarabe shook her head, as if the blood that stained her mouth burned her. “What was overdue. Sauron is no being like us – his daemon was a sham. A beast bound to follow and obey him, and seem a daemon. I. I killed it.” Helplessly, she traced back into the vast chamber’s edging shadows. Pharazôn followed.

Sure enough, the warg’s corpse was there, in a pool of its own black blood. “There was no saying it that thou wouldst hearken. No daemon may slay another. It is ill to kill a beast of my kind. Yet… now thou knowest…” Saying it, Azarabe turned away, ashamed at her own deed.

Pharazôn gazed at the uncanny corpse, in rare terror and wonder. He weighted Sauron’s lie, the betrayal and withholding. If his daemon, the good and pure, could do such a thing…what might he do, in the name of eternal life?

Azarabe echoed his mind. “What wilt thou do now? Recant Sauron? Send him away?”

His chest twinged again, where Sauron had plucked the silver hair. Reminding Pharazôn of the power and the pleasure he had received from Sauron despite the vast falsehood. Of the passage of time.

Pharazôn declared. “No. Think what it will mean when the people of Númenor, allies and foes, see an uncanny being without a daemon groveling before me. Before us!”

Azarabe hung her head, like Sauron had, save that her submission was true. “So be it,” she said.

“Thou hast done a great deed, my daemon,” he said. As if assuaging her made right his own shadows and sins. Yet she did not slide her head beneath his hand, as she would have before. She remained hidden as servants came and took the warg’s wreck away. And she did not weigh his solitude into sleep by joining him on the wide, cold bed.

Pharazôn kept his word, to his daemon and himself, as a king should. He accepted Sauron’s airy, regretless apology that surely his daemon had offended fair Azarabe and deserved his lot. He saw the weakness and fear in those around him as Sauron went about daemonless. And he planned for the greatest war man had ever waged, against the gods themselves. At what Pharazôn promised, his people worshipped him all the more, as if he was come to godhood, himself.

Yet from that day his golden daemon was never at his side, but always a man’s length behind him: as if Pharazôn’s shadow was more true than he was.

**Author's Note:**

> Azrarabê – Sea dog in the language of Númenor, Adunaic.  
> kirinki – Small red songbird native to Númenor.


End file.
